Mike Munhall

Dorrie and I recently (two weekends ago) spent a long weekend at a guest ranch at Steamboat Lake. We brought along our greyhound, Cash, for his first trip away from his new home and his beloved crate. Cash was fantastic, as was our long weekend. Here’s the scoop on the trip:

Vacation Photos

I’ll cut to the chase and give you the photos first. Notice the snazzy Flash gallery. I’m using some snazzy photo processing software to do all of my image processing and managing of my photo library. It makes it really easy to create galleries like this. I like it a lot. Also note that these are all family vacation snapshots, not photos that I would post on my photoblog. I’ve posted processed images on the photoblog that you should check out.

http://www.mikemunhall.com/Galleries/SteamboatLake2007

Dutch Creek Ranch

Dutch Creek Guest Ranch (http://www.dutchcreek.net/) was great. It’s a small ranch with a nice lodge right near the entrance to Steamboat Lake State Park. Obviously, there are horses. Lots of horses. We didn’t ride or have anything to do with the horses, though (other than photographing them). We mainly hung out in our cabin and read.

The cabins are great. Ours had two bedrooms, a full kitchen, a dining area, a living room, two full baths and a nice deck with a swing. It was basically a small house. The view from our cabin was fantastic. The only complaint is that the water comes from a well and contains a lot of sulfur. Sulfur is harmless, but it gave the water a murky yellow tint and it smelled bad. The toilets had that permanent look like someone had peed and not flushed. It was fine for showering though, and there was a water cooler in the cabin so we had plenty of clear water for cooking and drinking.

The lodge served breakfast in morning and dinner in the evenings. For being so small, you would be surprised at how good the food was. It wasn’t fine dining, but it was good enough to look forward to. Dorrie and I ate in the lodge only a few times in our three full days there. We prepared most of our meals ourselves in our cabin.

Nipple Peak

On the drive up, there was one particular mountain that caught my eye. This was the transaction that occurred between me and Dorrie regarding that mountain:

Mike: Hey, see that mountain? That’s Nipple Peak.
Dorrie: No way. Really? I don’t believe you. Stop being gross.
Mike: Sorry.
[A few minutes pass.]
Mike: Check the map. How much further is Steamboat Lake?
Dorrie: We’re about 20 minutes away.
[Slight pause.]
Dorrie: OMIGOD. It is called Nipple Peak.

It really is. No kidding.

Steamboat Lake?

Hmmm… Steamboat Lake. We saw it. That is, we could see it from the ranch and I’m sure it’s really nice. But we never bothered to go to it. You see, we were too busy not doing things. It was rare for us to get more than a couple hundred yards from our cabin. We made an adventure of nearby Pearl Lake one afternoon, though.

Pearl Lake

This is a beautiful lake. It’s small. You could probably hike around the entire perimeter in about 90 minutes. The lake is nestled between several small mountains. This is the place to be during camping season. Motorized vehicles are prohibited both in the park and on the lake. It looked like some guys were catching lots of fish, too. We spent a couple hours here scouting out things to photograph when the light was better. I could have stayed there all day and night, but Dorrie had to pee. We didn’t make it back to shoot photos, but we will one day.

Reading

There was a lot of reading going on between me and Dorrie. We must have brought about 20 pounds of reading material between the two of us. I actually finished an entire book (Speaker for the Dead) while I was there. For me that’s remarkable since I’m such a slow reader.

Mountain Pine Beetle

I knew that the pine forests of the Rockies were in serious trouble because of the pine beetle. I had no idea how bad it was until I saw it. It’s truly unbelievable the devastation that has already occurred. There were maybe a half dozen stretches on our trip from Denver to Steamboat Lake where there weren’t patches of brown, dead trees pines. There isn’t really a practical solution to stop the devastation. We can only hope for a very deep freeze in early fall (right now) to help slow the spread of the beetle. It’s hard to believe that our pine forests may be gone in a matter of a decade or so.

If you haven’t already, take a look a the slideshow. All those brown trees are pine beetle vicitims.

Emma, the Mountain Lion

I was heading over to the pond to photograph in the golden hour of sunlight when a neighboring vacationer asked me how good my lens was. I wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at, being that he was just standing on the dirt path drinking a Budweiser while staring off into the distance. He let me in on the secret that there was a mountain lion cub laying down in the grass near where I was headed. It was a good thing he told me before I stepped on its tail and was attacked. Dorrie, Cash and I spent the next half hour on this neighbors cabin deck photographing the mountain lion hunt (and catch) mice. I didn’t have the right gear to get any great shots, but I got good enough shots to post here.

Photographing in the Rain

Thank the dear Bejeezus for rain. We love rain. And we got our wish of getting a nice steady rain for an entire day so we would have a good excuse to not go anywhere (as if we really needed one). I did actually suit up to see what kind of moody pictures I could make in the weather. Before I ventured out of the cabin, I set up my camera on the tripod, attached my shutter release and got the entire thing ready as if I were going to photograph inside the cabin. Then, I unpacked the handy, 50-cent rain poncho that my dad sent to me a couple years ago. I had it stowed away in my camera bag for an occasion like this. I used the poncho as a raincoat for my camera equipment. I just wrapped the camera and the attached accessories in the poncho, pulled the rain slip of my camera backpack over the backpack, put on my own raincoat and hiked around the ranch. I didn’t get any spectacular photos, but it felt nice walking around in the rain and picking out moody scenes to shoot.

The Ride Home/First Snow

It was still raining on our last morning at Dutch Creek Ranch. On our way back, on Rabbit Ears Pass, we broke the low clouds and had some spectacular views of the valleys along the pass. It would have made for great photography but I was too anxious to get home and, when we did stop to shoot, I didn’t feel like taking the necessary time to photograph correctly. The remarkable thing about our trip home over Rabbit Ears and Berthoud Passes was that there was a light dusting of snow on the mountains and a little slush along the sides of the roads. Winter is right around the corner, and I can’t wait for it to get here.

I’ll start this off by getting the crappy stuff out of the way: The day I left Denver on my way to British Columbia I felt a tickle in my throat and I was sneezing. Long story short, I caught a cold that kicked my ass during the entire vacation. As a result, I had little motivation to get out my camera and therefore have very few photos worthy of the photoblog. That isn’t to say I didn’t shoot at all; I just have very few images worth sharing. I’m disappointed that I got to my favorite place on the planet and didn’t have the energy to do some really good photography. Nevertheless, the fishing was fun and I enjoyed myself.

Now for the good stuff.

The first day, we fished with Mark Grant, a well-known outfitter in the Sooke area. I met Mark on the trip two years ago. He’s a swell guy and he knows the waters around Sooke probably better than anyone. We were on the ocean for just about three hours before we caught our limit of spring salmon and called it a day. Time flies when you have fish on your line the entire time. The hightlight of morning was Ted’s 32-pound spring. A 32-pound salmon huge, if you’re wondering.

Days two and three of our trip coincided with the 2007 Sooke Fishing Derby. On these days a good friend of uncle Ted, Mark Tolliaffero, took us out on his boat. Just as we began to fish a pod of whales surfaced right in front of the boat then swam right beneath us. It was an awesome sight, for sure. But, salmon have an understandable tendency to avoid predators and we hardly saw any fish the rest of the day. It turned out to be 12+ hours of sitting in an uncomfortable seat of a gently rocking boat in complete silence. Add a gentle breeze and some warm sunshine and top that off with a healthy dose of cold medicine and you the makings for a great nap. We eventually caught a couple springs near the end of the day, one of which qualified for the derby. That fish was mine, and it finished dead last in the competition.

The third day was much like the first, but add some fog. We bagged our catch just a few hours into the day. This time Harold caught the big fish - a 28.6-pound spring that qualified for the tournament. Harold and his fish ended up taking eight place in the tournament. I’m sure it will be delicious when we get it back from the smoker.

This visit wasn’t all fishing. Diane, being the big supported of the arts in Sooke, scored admission for everyone to the Purchaser’s Preview event of the 2007 Sooke Fine Arts Show. After the show we had dinner at this swank joint, the name of which I cannot remember right now. I made it over to 17-Mile House for a burger with their kick ass garlic mayo. I had another burger at another pub, whose name I also can’t remember. I did make it down to French Beach one evening just for an hour or so before I ran out of energy.

As usual, Vancouver Island was beautiful. The Sooke area is growing though, and it scares me to think what it’s going to be like in 5+ years. It’s not going to be the same small town we know today.

OK… now run over to my photoblog and check out some photos of Canada. I have about 15 that I’ll be posting, one per day or so, over the next two or three weeks.

[This Flickr photo set has all of the photos from this trip. Well, not all of them, but the ones that matter.]

Our good friends Pete and Stacey, as a wedding gift, gave us a stay at a lodge in Crested Butte. It took us two years to finally make it up there, and it’s too bad we hadn’t taken advantage of the trip sooner. Dorrie and I both loved every minute of trip. Even the drive was awesome.

We chose a weekend late in September so we could catch some of the fall color in the mountains. I think we chose the exact right time of the year because every birch and aspen tree between our home and Crested Butte was in peak color. (Unfortunately, every photo I took of the fall color was in mid-day light, so the photos aren’t so spectacular.) I had never driven up Highway 285 past Pine Junction. The drive through the plains of Park County and the mountain passes to Gunnison are now my favorite Colorado drive.

It had snowed lightly in the mountains the night before we left, so there was a light blanket of snow everywhere. If we had chosen to stop to photograph whenever we found a something scenic, it would have taken us three days to make the four-hour drive. One of our few stops was along Monarch Pass near the continental divide. The cloudy skies and the snow that had dusted the pine trees the night before made for some pictures that I think I’ll be able to print and frame. Seriously, take a look at some of the photos in this Flickr photo set to see what I mean.

Our actual stay in Crested Butte was filled with a whole lot of… um, well… not much. We used the weekend to relax, mostly. We stayed at a quaint, 17-room lodge called Cristiana Guesthaus. The lodge, while being nothing special, was really just what we needed: quiet and comfortable and filled with friendly people that all wanted to watch the Broncos beat the Patriots. Dorrie and I spent quite a bit of time in various restaurants in town. Our most notable meal was at Le Bosquet. I’ll leave the review of our meal to Dorrie, but I can say that we thoroughly enjoyed the food and especially the South African wine that we tried.

The oddest part of our mini-vacation was that we just happened to choose the weekend of the Vinotok Fall Festival. This is strange… we still don’t have a freaking clue what the festival was about. The first night of our stay, as we were walking back to the lodge after dinner, we walked past a large pile of pallets and brush arranged in a manner that, if lit on fire, would burn very bright and very large. Sure enough, around 9:00 that night, right outside the lodge, a large crowd of rowdy, young whippersnappers gathered around the pile of soon-to-be-burning material and started chanting, “We’re not drunk!” or, perhaps it was “Burn that witch!” or something else. Like I said, Dorrie and I still don’t know what the festival was about or what the crowd was chanting. We had a perfect view of the bonfire from the balcony of the lodge and I was able to manage a few photographs of the pagan children dancing in the flames.

On our last day we chose at random an out-and-back hike in the mountains outside the lodge. We chose the Oh-Be-Joyful trail, and our choice was a good one. I got to finally do some serious off-roading in my Jeep Wrangler to get to the trailhead. The hike was nice, although we found it strange that there was a large number of cows in the mountains at 10,000 feet above see level. Mountain Moomonsters is what the locals call them. (”Cows. Why did it have to be cows.” - Harrison Ford, Raiders of the Lost Ark)

We have some family that recently purchased a nice condo in Estes Park. We had the opportunity to spend some time up there this weekend to attend the annual Scottish Festival. Dorrie and I have been there the last three years in a row to enjoy the meat pies, dog shows, jousting and of course, the Highland games.

It was a typical September weekend for Estes Park. The weather was unpredicatable; there was clear blue skies with mild temperatures and the next moment it was pouring rain and nearly freezing. Whatever. Dorrie and I like that kind of stuff.

For the most part, it was a very relaxing weekend in the condo. We left only to attend the festival. The most exciting thing for me during our stay was learning Vampire: The Eternal Strugle. I won’t bother to try to explain how this game works; however, I will say that it is a tremendously fun game if you have the time to devote to learning it. I’m looking forward to playing again with my brother-in-law and his friends.

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This fella was hanging out in the neighbor’s yard when we arrived.

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Yes, jousting. I thought it was just a form of entertainment performed by actors at these types of festivals. Nope. Check out the guy standing in front of the Night that says Ni. That’s a Canadian flag on his uniform. Yup. He’s on the Canadian jousting team. I’m not too sure what he’s doing in the next photo.

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This was really cool. It’s a rail model where the trains travel through different miniatures of European towns and villages from the 1910’s and 1920’s. The detail was impressive. The last photo is of a dragon driving a tractor.

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As usual, Nephew B was his usual charming self.

Dorrie’s aunt and uncle own a home in British Columbia. They spend part of their year in B.C., and every year they have Dorrie’s dad, grandfather and usually a couple of other people up to the house for a few days of salmon fishing. I went last year, but missed this year’s trip for various reasons. Here’s a sampling of family-album photos and a few others that I’m considering working with to make enlargements and then frame.

A quick synopsis of the trip: Dorrie’s dad and I flew to Oregon to stay with his mom and dad for a couple of days. We attended the annual family reunion while we were there. Dad, grandad and I then drove up the Oregon and Washington coasts and boarded a ferry to Vancouver Island. The day after we got to B.C., we picked up my brother-in-law, Patrick, from the airport and then spent the next three days in the Strait of Juan de Fuca fishing for salmon and yucking it up. We spent some time with some friends of the family during the evenings. The return trip was the opposite of the trip out: We boarded the ferry back to Washington, drove down the coast to the grandparents house in Oregon, then flew out the next day back to Colorado.

The highlight of the trip for me was the last day of fishing. We had some heavy rain during the night and the next morning was socked in with thick fog. Photographically, the day was simply amazing. The mood was dark and gloomy and made photographing super fun. But, I was shooting from the back of a boat, and that’s not very easy. Nevertheless, there were a few shots that I’ll be printing this afternoon and, hopefully, adding to the galleries in Flickr soon.

Dorrie and I spent a week at uncle Ted and aunt Diane's house in British Columbia a bit earlier in the year than usual. Normally, we are in B.C. in November or December. The spring trip was just as nice, of course. We were expecting more rain, though. We love rain.

We brought our friend Jen with us. This was the first time Dorrie and I spent any time in the house with someone else. Jen is a great person to vacation with (introverts are really good at staying out of each other's way). We all had a good time together.

On our first trip to the house a couple years ago, we ran out of propane (which is the fuel source for nearly everything in the house). On the next trip the fridge stopped working and all of our groceries went bad. On that same trip we ran out of propane on the grill just when our steaks were about half way done. This trip was no different as far as minor annoyances go. We couldn't get the heater to run, the garbage disposal quit working and there was no sound when playing DVDs. A quick call to a couple of Ted and Diane's "people" got all of the problems resolved lickety split. As usual.

My intention on this trip was to shoot exclusively with the Hasselblad. Unfortunately, the only lens I have for that camera crapped out on my second roll of film. I had no choice but to revert to the digital Nikon for the rest of the trip (which was nearly all of it). Since I've photographed the area so much, I wasn't as motivated to photograph as I usually am. I still got a few good shots that will make nice prints. Would have been better if I had the big camera though.

We didn't discover or do anything new on this trip. We visited the same beaches (China, Mystic, French), hiked the same trails (China, Mystic, French, Ewok), went the same restaurants (Point No Point, Vista 18, 17 Mile House) and shopped the same stores (Roger's Chocolates, Munro's Books). Dorrie made some fantastic meals (pasta with pesto, garlic and dill salmon, roast chicken, beef roast). I read, but did not finish any books (Dark Tower VII, Q & A Way in Chess).

I have no complaints about this vacation. Looking forward to the annual fishing trip this summer.